Rough and Tumble (18 page)

Jesse answered on the third ring in his soldier's voice. “Heard you had some fun with Leighton last night.”

Gossip traveled fast among the Rough & Tumble crowd. “Who said?”

“Kat told Bennett, who told me when he came in to blow a few hundred and give away the usual Rolex during the night shift in here. Where are you?”

“Promise you won't tell Leighton?”

Jesse, who didn't have the world's best sense of humor, didn't comment, even if it was a joke.

Cash turned toward his T-bird, leaning against the fender. “I took a trip up the UFO Highway.”

“Why there?”

Instinct urged him to crow about how he'd brought Molly along for an extended distraction, but in the time it took to silence himself, Jesse figured it out.

“You're with the blonde and she wanted to get an alien T-shirt.”

No use lying. “She's with me for a few days, but I'll be taking her back home to San Diego on Saturday. Can't hurt to spend a little time in SoCal as long as I'm riding range again.”

“Sounds to me like you might be sticking around San Diego.”

“Because of her? Hell no.”

“Whatever you say, Cash.”

It irked him that Jesse seemed so sure about something he knew nothing about. “I'll probably head to Covina. There's always a good game going on in Jerry Talson's bar in the dead of night, and by then, I'll need a money infusion, unless I can find a construction gig.”

“Construction, huh? Is that a polite way of saying you'll keep hammering away at . . . what's her name again?”

“Molly.”

Cash said it too quickly, and Jesse grunted. It was as good as a laugh.

“That's funny?” Cash asked.

“Kind of. You don't much bother with names.”

“Sure I do.”

“All right, then who was the curly redhead you were with two weeks ago at the R and T?”

Damn.
“Which night?”

“Tuesday. It was the night when Rich Boy Bennett hit on Jimmy Beetles's niece and Beetles nearly cracked him over the head with a bottle.”

Ah, that night.
Cash tried to scoop the redhead's name out of his memory, but . . . no go.

“Her name was Stacy,” he lied, banking on the hope that Jesse wouldn't know any better.

“Samantha,” Jesse said. “I know because she asked me about a job and never showed up here to work the next day.”

“Stacy's close to Samantha.”

Jesse let out a rough sigh. “Either way, maybe you should be careful with this Molly. She's not your usual.”

Tell me about it
. “Molly can take care of herself. Besides, what do you think I am? A depraved scumbag?”

“Cash, boy, I know you have a talent for always letting the girls down easy so they never even think to call you names afterward, but you've strayed into foreign territory this time. And I'm not shocked. You like winning pretty things like that car, but we both know you're not capable of taking care of a woman like you do that T-bird. Or like . . .”

Cash braced himself for the sound of her name. “Don't say it.”

Jesse didn't, but Cash's mind filled in the blank.

Johanna
. His first “love.” His first realization that relationships were a nightmare that could destroy you if you let them.

Across the way, Molly had come out of the Little A'Le'Inn's simple white building with blue trim. She'd pulled an oversized yellow T-shirt that sported a green, bulbous-headed, bug-eyed alien over her tight
Vegas, Baby!
shirt, and when she saw him at the car, she stretched the material away from her, showing it off.

Cash's heart expanded before he crushed it back into place.

No more Johannas. No more attachments.

After Cash gave her an a-okay sign, she went through the door again, probably to buy the hideous shirt. Too bad it didn't make
her
less attractive.

“You still there?” Jesse asked.

“Yeah. Just waiting for you to get tired of being my life coach so I can ask if you've heard anything else about Leighton.”

Jesse's voice went steely. “What do you want to know? The jackoff pulled a knife on Beetles inside the Rough and Tumble, so Kat chased him out with Casey's Special yelling, ‘Not in my place!'”

Kat had named her bat long ago, but her shotgun, which she rarely used, had an even more colorful name—The Torso Muncher.

Jesse continued. “You can imagine how that tickled Beetles—he was ready to tear off Leighton's balls, and he chased the asswipe out of the saloon. He almost biked after him, too, but Hooper and the boys pulled him back.”

When Molly came bopping out of the building with a bag, walking toward him with the alien shirt draped over her arm, Cash signed off with Jesse.

“Thanks, man. I'll be in touch later.”

“Cash?”

The guy didn't quit, but that was why Cash liked him. Jesse was always there, rain or shine, shit or Shinola. “Yeah?”

“Don't mess her up.”

Cash hung up the phone, one hand fisting by his side as Molly came closer, bringing the scent of strawberries and champagne and sunlight with her.

Forcing him to pull shade over the light peeking in through the cracks in his guard.

Was Cash acting more distant than usual?

That night, after he and Molly had spent a couple of hours breaking in the—was the proper word
interesting
?—mobile trailer motel room's mattress, Molly searched for a reason for his remoteness.

They were driving down the highway again on a short side trip from the Little A'Le'Inn, and Cash steered the Thunderbird off to one of the dirt side roads to do what most people who came to the Extraterrestrial Highway did—watch the skies.

But taking an alternate route with him only reminded her of another car-bound seduction a couple nights ago in Rough & Tumble, and all the words he'd written in pen on her skin pounded—even the ones he'd added to her today:
blow job
,
cunnilingus
,
honeypot
.

He wordlessly turned off the engine and got out of the car, going around to the back, and she watched him in the rearview mirror until he lifted the trunk, obscuring her view.

Just another glimpse of him, just another peek—God, she craved to have him in her sights again.

When her phone dinged, she almost ignored it. But what if Sofia or Arden was trying to contact her?

She'd almost forgotten to get in touch with them tonight, thanks to lolling around in bed with Cash before he'd suddenly smacked her butt and told her to get up because he wanted to take her somewhere.

Checking her phone, she saw that the text wasn't from either of her friends. Instead, her sister's name shone from the screen.

Have time for a call?

Molly squeezed her eyes shut, as if that would make the message disappear. There were usually two reasons Margaret wanted to arrange a phone call: 1) she wanted to vent about the stress of supporting herself in the arts or 2) she wanted to directly ask for a little extra money to tide her over for the rest of the month.

Molly had already returned her sister's text last night, telling her more about the upcoming interview, so it wasn't that Molly would ever leave Margaret in the lurch. But sometimes it was always about Margaret, the older spotlight sister, the one who'd gotten a new used car when she was sixteen and had said “poor thing” when their parents hadn't had enough money to get one for Molly when she came of age. Margaret, the artist who resisted a permanent job because it stilted her creativity, the one who promised that someday her big break would come and she would pay Molly back.

Molly had never been militant about being compensated for her “loans.” She genuinely thought family should rely on each other, especially siblings who'd lost their parents. But when she thought about Cash's attitude—the lone man on the road who didn't like to be told what to do—it made her feel like she was being controlled by Margaret, puppeted emotionally on strings of duty ever since Mom and Dad had died. It'd been that way for years and she'd never done a damned thing about it.

She grabbed her sack—that's what Cash would've said—and texted back.

In the middle of something right now. Is it urgent?

A minute passed, and Molly's good-sister vibes wavered. Was she being too much of a bitch by putting Margaret off? Or was it about time she laid down a boundary with her sister?

Margaret's answer came through.

Not urgent. Just wondering if I can help you prep for interview?

Molly wondered if her sister was more excited about the thought of more paychecks than Molly actually was.

She texted back.

I'm good.

Another minute passed, and Molly was pretty sure her sister was surprised that Molly wasn't picking up the phone and faithfully calling her ASAP, taking care of her.

A response finally came.

Ok. Talk later then.

Molly looked at the phone for a moment; even over a screen, Margaret sounded put out. Telling her to hold her horses had been easy, though—almost as easy as pouring ice on Ted Genhaven's dick, although not as pleasurable.

Standing up for yourself was pretty wonderful.

Filing away Margaret for the morning, Molly quickly thumb-typed a text to Sofia's phone—
Star watching in the middle of desert!
—and got out of the car to take a picture of the dark sky, which seemed more endless than ever. The stars were even crisper out here, the night full of a silence so deep that it seemed to swallow itself. Nearby, shadows appeared to take on life, but they were only the silhouettes of cows and cacti, not aliens rising up from the dirt to kidnap them.

When Cash's voice stamped down the quiet, she almost jumped.

“You calling in to report a UFO sighting already?”

She pressed Send on her screen as he stood near her arm. She could feel him on her skin, the memory of his stroking fingertips, his lips.

“I'm only posting my tri-daily ‘I'm alive' report to the girls. Oh, shoot.” She knocked herself in the head. “You know what I should've done? Texted them pictures of the alien undies I bought them in the gift shop.”

“Do it tomorrow.” He was holding a couple of blankets, and he flopped one of them over his shoulder, wrapping the other around her.

The flannel was warm. So was the feel of his arms as he pulled her to him, flush against his body. When was this going to start feeling old, the spark of new attraction wearing off?

Ever?

“You're right,” she said. “I'll do it tomorrow. I'll also text my sister in the morning with a pic of that little alien sandstone rock painting I bought for her. She wanted to chat tonight, and I think she was taken aback that I put her off.”

“Because you're usually there to answer her every beck and call?”

He made her sound like a . . . well, puppet. “Yeah, I have been.”

When he touched his fingertips to her face, her stress seemed to pulse out of her, dissipating into the night. His touch always made her feel so much more relaxed. She didn't know how, but she was pretty certain Cash had some kind of magic sway over her.

At least for now.

He led her to the side of the car, then took the blanket from his shoulder and spread it over the roof until it draped down. Molly laughed—he was protecting the paint job. Cute.

Without warning, he spun her around until her back was to the car, taking her breath away. As she stood there, her hands on his shoulders, her face inches away from his, they looked into each other's eyes.

Magic
, she thought.

Images swirled in her head: kissing him, exploring every inch of his hard body, traveling him like a road that she never wanted to end.

But that was imbecilic. Why even think of a future with a man who only lived in the present?

As he propped his arm on the roof, over her head, she held a wing of the blanket out to him, inviting him to go undercover, too.

Waving it off, he turned around, the stars and skies welcoming them from above, his arm still cradled above her.

She wallowed in the peace, which somehow felt more intimate than what they'd shared in that motel room. He actually seemed like a . . . boyfriend.

Right.
That was a good one. Did he even realize he was acting like one?

“Your sister's lucky you're there for her,” he said, taking up their conversation where he'd left it.

“Apparently not tonight. She didn't seem happy that I told her she'd have to wait.”

He chuckled. “Molly P. Preston—everyone's Girl Friday. You're better than a fetch-it girl.”

“Don't I know it?” And she'd started to realize it only on this trip. Because of him?

He apparently came to the same conclusion just as she did, and he laughed, grasping her wrist with his other hand under the blanket and guiding her hand to his cock.

“Here's a bone for the fetch-it girl.”

Lust thumped at her, and she smiled, giving him a soft squeeze. His laugh turned into a groan. Emboldened, she rubbed him gently, almost idly. They'd showered after getting it on all afternoon, and he smelled like soap and skin and new cotton. She wanted to fade into him, getting closer than ever.

His gaze turned fiery as he looked down at her, watching her face as she got him going.

“When you head home,” he said, his tone gritty, “you're gonna keep on making people wait for your calls, right? You're gonna start putting yourself on your own schedule.”

“I might.”

“Say you will.”

Her voice caught on a hook of lust. “I will.”

“And I'm including all the men who're gonna be calling you.” A throb of time passed. “You should make them wait, too.”

She stopped caressing him. “I doubt I'll have the energy to go on those dates again.”

Especially after an adventure like this. But how could she articulate that? How could she say that, with him, she wasn't living inside her head anymore, that this was real, and how could anything else compare?

At the epiphany, she used both hands to pull the blanket tighter around her.

“Did I say something wrong?” he asked.

“No.”

“Molly . . .”

The words crashed out of her. “How would you like it if I asked you about all the women waiting for you after you're done with me?”

She braced herself for a speech about how she should value freedom and living in the moment, but it never came. When she turned to him, all she found was Cash looking up at the sky, a more haunted look on his face than ever.

Ask him
, she thought.
Just do it
.

“Do you have anyone waiting for you?”

He tensed up, and fear jolted her when she thought he might order her back into the car so he could deposit her in Vegas.

Something withered inside of her at the very idea.

Finally, in a stiff voice, he answered. “Let's not talk about that stuff.”

God help her but she pushed it. “Because you're married? Engaged? Something?”

“None of those.”

As if to remind her that this road trip wasn't exactly about getting to know each other's minds and souls, he reached inside her blanket, cupping a breast through her T-shirt. She wilted, her entire body whirling with hormones she couldn't control around him.

Her mind wanted more—wanted explanations, wanted him to stop making this trip all about sex, and . . .

What? What did she want?

He pressed his mouth to her ear, biting her lobe, whispering in a dark, leave-no-doubt tone.

“Don't think about that crap, Molly. Don't think about anything.”

And for now, she didn't.

***

After Cash had made Molly stop talking for a good while during their stargazing, and even after they returned to the motel to fuck until dawn, he was pretty sure she wouldn't be asking him any more questions for the time being.

What made her think there was another woman in his life anyway? There wasn't. Johanna had been gone for eight years now, longer than he'd even had the Thunderbird. Some shrinks might say that he'd used the car to replace the black spot in his chest that Johanna had left, but Cash wasn't into symbolism or Freudian bullshit.

He didn't let himself worry about it, and the next day, after they'd left the Little A'Le'Inn behind and hit the road again, meandering up the 375 to where it met the 60 and ran west into the 95 south, Cash kept the car stereo up loud, letting music cancel out any conversation. But Molly didn't seem to notice as they ate at yet another greasy spoon, checked out a ghost town, got back on the road, and stayed in another run-down motel with “a lot of character” that still had a VCR and tiny packages of flower-smelling white soap in the bathroom.

By the time another day after that one rolled around, Cash would've predicted that he'd be done with the entire so-called adventure. But he wasn't. In fact, every time he looked at Molly sitting in the passenger seat with her bare feet, wearing her newest T-shirt from the latest roadside attraction, he had that much more trouble tearing his gaze away.

It wasn't only his gaze, though. A couple of times, he'd thought about what it'd be like when he finally dropped her off in San Diego. Would she invite him into that condo she'd talked about? Right, like he'd fit in real nice with the professional single-girl décor as she cooked him a fancy meal.

He wasn't that guy. She had to know it, and he damned well should, too. So why was it hard to picture the T-bird's passenger seat empty?

Now, as they drove away from Rhyolite, one of the ghost towns around the Beatty area, Cash held tight to the steering wheel. Molly didn't have any kind of hold on him, and he'd bet the T-bird on that.

The afternoon sun gushed through the windshield, and he turned up the air conditioner. Molly was fanning herself with a souvenir map she'd bought back at the Little A'Le'Inn for under a buck—she'd been using it all day while they'd poked around Rhyolite's offerings, such as a house made of beer bottles and a decrepit Old West bank building, which was just pretty much walls today. Molly had enjoyed learning the history of the town, which used to be a tent city that sprung up during the Nevada gold rush, and she'd even forced him to see the museum and art exhibit. In spite of his let's-get-this-over-with mood, he'd managed to have some fun, thinking up words for every place they went.

Smooth
, for the glass of that bottle house.

Deep
, to describe the digging those miners did back in the day.

Later, he was going to write them both on Molly's body, adding to the growing ink collection, which faded a little more every night. But he was also going to make
smooth
and
deep
a part of their time in bed . . .

Off the road, in the near distance, a ramshackle adobe building loomed a ways back from the highway, flanked by bikes. Behind that, a matching one-story pueblo motel sat even farther back.

Cash turned off the Ryan Adams song on the stereo. “That's the Coyote Moon Lodge. Ever hear of it in your guidebooks?”